Shylock Is My Name: The Merchant Of Venice Retold (Hogarth Shakespeare)

Description

'Who is this guy, Dad? What is he doing here?' With an absent wife and a daughter going off the rails, wealthy art collector and philanthropist Simon Strulovitch is in need someone to talk to. So when he meets Shylock at a cemetery in Cheshire's Golden Triangle, he invites him back to his house. It's the beginning of a remarkable friendship. Elsewhere in the Golden Triangle, the rich, manipulative Plurabelle (aka Anna Livia Plurabelle Cleopatra A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever Christine) is the face of her own TV series, existing in a bubble of plastic surgery and lavish parties. She shares prejudices and a barbed sense of humour with her loyal friend D'Anton, whose attempts to play Cupid involve Strulovitch's daughter - and put a pound of flesh on the line. Howard Jacobson's version of The Merchant of Venice bends time to its own advantage as it asks what it means to be a father, a Jew and a merciful human being in the modern world.

Promotion info

Man Booker Prize-winner and our great chronicler of Jewish life revisits Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

Reviews

"Expect ...The kind of comic intelligence that has made his name" -- Sam Parker Esquire "Shylock is My Name is witty and astute." -- Rosie Kinchen The Sunday Times "Jacobson's writing is virtuoso. He is the master of shifting tones, from the satirical to the serious. His prose has the sort of elastic precision you only get from a writer who is truly in command ... There's also deep and sincere soul-searching going on here" -- Lucasta Miller Independent "Howard Jacobson's reworking of The Merchant of Venice is a sly success... Irascible, eloquent Shylock is a man transplanted from the play to today." -- Tim Martin Daily Telegraph "An unusually engaged form of literary criticism ... Jacobson treats Shylock less as a product of Shakespeare's culture and imagination than as a real historical figure emblematic of Jewish experience" -- Anthony Cummins Prospect

Author description

Howard Jacobson won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse award in 2000 for The Mighty Walzer and then again in 2013 for Zoo Time. In 2010 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question and was also shortlisted for the prize in 2013 for his most recent novel, J. He has written fourteen novels and five works of non-fiction.